


year of the tiger

by quarterelf



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Everyone is LGBT, More tags to follow, Nonbinary Character, Other, Slow Burn, Trans Caleb Widogast, Trans Male Character, frenemies to lovers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-20
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-06-30 01:43:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15741564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quarterelf/pseuds/quarterelf
Summary: the one where caleb and mollymauk are college roommates.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hey there! i'm extremely new to critrole (only on episode 7!) but i wanted to try my hand at an idea i had while poking around the wiki and fandom. i haven't written in awhile so please excuse me while i slowly figure this all out.

Mollymauk Tealeaf is a complete and utter mystery to Caleb.

His new roommate may as well be a ghost for all that Caleb’s seen of him these first few weeks of the semester. Try as he might, he can only summon a grand total of three things he’s learned about his mystery man: his name (gleaned from handwritten letters stuffed in their mailbox), the heavy patchouli-stink he always leaves in his wake, and that he does laundry even less than Caleb, judging by the growing piles of garish clothes on one side of the dorm room floor.

“I could always move back in,” Nott suggests one morning over breakfast in the dining hall, casually emptying her flask into coffee as if it were the most natural thing to do at ten in the morning. She wordlessly holds it up in her small green hand, offering Caleb that little extra _something_ in his own morning coffee, at which he politely covers his mug and shakes his head as if to say _I love you but, please, this is neither the time nor the place_.

“And I'd like to have you back,” Caleb confesses with a small smile, dipping a scratched metal spoon into his coffee and sending a little flameless heat shooting down through his fingertips to warm it back up to this side of _piping hot_. “But, hm, I don't think that arrangement will quite work a second time around.”

Caleb and Nott's paths had crossed one fateful day in their freshman year over what was, simply put, just a damn clerical error. The registrar had accidentally used Caleb's birth name in assigning his room, and Caleb hadn't noticed anything peculiar about “Nott the Brave” until he was ready to move in, coming face to face with the small goblin woman. Well, they ended up getting along so famously neither decided to report the error, and Caleb roomed with Nott the rest of the year without anyone finding out about their unusual arrangement. The rest, as they say, was history.

“Wouldn’t hurt to try,” says Nott under her breath, downing her coffee in one quick shot that even impresses Caleb.

Caleb laughs softly. “Wouldn't hurt my roommate to at least introduce himself, the arschloch.”

That is, until the arschloch suddenly _does_.

Caleb gets in from his last class of the day to the TV blaring _Blood Magic Daily_ and a pair of heavy boots blocking the door. He shoves it open with an annoyed huff, and inside his room is a person that he’s never, ever seen in his life. There’s a lavender tiefling dancing around, humming slightly tunelessly as he rummages through Mollymauk’s dirty laundry, tail whooshing along to a half-remembered song in the air behind him.

“What,” Caleb blurts out, the picture of coolness as always, hand still on the doorknob, mind trying to process what it was seeing.

“Well, hello there,” says the tiefling, tossing a gently wrinkled silk blouse on the bed. He has a faint accent that Caleb can’t quite place. “You must be... Cailan.”

“Caleb,” he corrects, not without a touch of irritation. “And you, who might you be, stranger?”

“Mollymauk Tealeaf, at your service.” A pair of striped trousers joins the blouse. “Well, my friends call me Molly,” Mollymauk adds thoughtfully, standing to his full height and asserting himself as a fair bit taller than Caleb.

Caleb frowns, standing up a little straighter himself. “Mollymauk it is then.”

The tension in the room crackles like an arcane bolt. Mollymauk just grins crookedly, a white fang dipping over his dark lip, saying nothing. There’s a look in his red, infernal eyes that says enough of _something_ for him, something Caleb recognizes as a challenge.

But to what?

Caleb has far too much social anxiety to find out. He lowers his eyes and moves to his desk to drop off his textbooks.

”So, where have you been?” he asks, and instantly regrets it, because it sounds far from conversational and much more like an accusation.

Mollymauk barks out a laugh, head turning with a jingle of jewelry from his ram’s horns. “Um, around,” he says with a sly smile. “Worried about me, mother?”

“No,” Caleb says quickly. Heat rushes to his cheeks and he quickly busies himself with the nearest large, dusty tome.

“Well, it was nice meeting you,” Mollymauk says without any trace of conviction, still smiling like he’s in on some private joke.

“The pleasure is mine,” Caleb lies, offering a quick smile in return.

“I'm sure,” says Mollymauk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title nabbed from the st. vincent song. thanks for reading!


	2. Chapter 2

There is a long, long list of things Caleb has never experienced. He’s never had sex, for instance, or been stung by a bee, both of which he is happy to report don’t bother him in the slightest. He's never rode a bike, or gone swimming in the ocean either, though he’d like to try it one day. Somewhere on that list, though, somewhere with the lowest of priorities, he might place “never seen a tiefling naked”.

Only for Mollymauk, of all people, to change that.

Caleb doesn’t quite realize it when it happens, nose buried in a book when he walks into their room. Everything, according to his peripherals, is where it should be. It’s when he’s hit by the smoky, cloying scent of burning incense that he realizes something… is different.

He looks up and there Mollymauk Tealeaf is in all his glory, splayed naked on his own little twin mattress and watching daytime soaps, tail swinging lazily over the side of the bed.

“Oh,” Caleb says, feeling his heart drop somewhere in the vicinity of his ass, because not only is Mollymauk completely, unabashedly naked in front of him but Mollymauk’s body is not so different from Caleb’s in the secretest of ways.

“ _Oh_ ,” repeats Mollymauk, grinning wickedly no doubt at being discovered in such a compromising position. 

Every drop of blood in Caleb’s body is glowing hot and bright under his freckled cheeks. He knows he’s _ogling_ now, but Mollymauk has so much ink on his skin, crossed with so many scars, there doesn’t seem to be a way to stop taking him in. And he swears by the Archeart, in some deep part of his frightened lizard brain, that Mollymauk is somehow preening a little.

“I’m sorry,” Caleb says, but his legs don’t work no matter how much he tells them to just _move_ , to let him flee from the mounting disaster unfolding in front of him. “I did not mean to—I was just going...”

Mollymauk laughs and laughs like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard, and somehow, miraculously, Caleb manages to go redder in the face.

“Relax, Caleb!” Mollymauk calms down enough to speak, voice gone all throaty and hoarse. “A little nudity never killed anyone. I think.”

Except Caleb really thinks he’ll die of embarrassment. Except Caleb isn’t going to stand around and try to have a normal conversation with a naked tiefling. He finally manages to tear himself away, slamming the door behind him without a word and hurrying down the hall.

Mollymauk’s laughter follows him all the way out.

*

“So you saw the fella naked, what’s the problem?” says Nott tactfully. Her clawed fingers are intertwined with Caleb’s as they walk across campus sipping iced coffees. The weather is beginning to turn cold, cold enough that Caleb has taken to wearing scarves again, but still, who can resist an iced coffee?

Caleb gives Nott’s hand a stern little squeeze.

“Please remember I have to live with him for the rest of the semester,” Caleb tells her exasperatedly. “I have to live with the _knowledge_ of his… you know...” He trails off, far too embarrassed to confide in even Nott that he has the image of Mollymauk’s big, dark nipples seared into his brain.

A little coffee shoots out of Nott’s nose as she chokes on a laugh. “Caleb!”

“I’m serious,” says Caleb, but he can’t help but crack a smile at the sight of Nott’s face. He pulls a crumpled napkin from his pocket, shaking the lint off of it before he hands it over to her.

She accepts it wordlessly, mopping her chin off. “Anyway, I’m sure you’ll live, even with knowledge of his, _you-know-whats_ ,” she says with a crooked smile, only all of Nott’s smiles are crooked, too many teeth jammed into her broad, sharp mouth at all angles.

The two of them head down to the aviary, where Caleb makes a soft bird call until a barn owl flutters down and lands on his outstretched arm. He doesn’t mind that he can just feel the edges of its talons through his coat.

“Frumpkin!” Nott squeaks delightedly, reaching up to pet the bird. He leans into the touches for a moment, and then stares at Caleb, waiting for a command.

“Just a moment, friend.” Caleb strokes Frumpkin’s head, murmuring words of power, and soft feathers blend into softer fur under his fingertips, the owl’s glowing body elongating as it crawls up his arm and settles into the form of a wiry Bengal cat around his neck like a second scarf.

Nott is staring up at Caleb like he hung the twin moons.

“You really ought to teach me how to summon a familiar one of these days,” she tells him breathlessly, her hand finding his again.

“One of these days I will,” promises Caleb, and they set off again.


	3. Chapter 3

Jester, Caleb thinks, is absolutely crazy. She keeps days old pastries in her purse, makes windows fly open and slam shut in the middle of conversations, and loves to dance during lectures in the classes they share, especially when she answers questions correctly. But Nott adores her and her menagerie of friends, so naturally that means Caleb must adore them as well as they wildly careen into his life.

“Oh, I can’t believe you hate Molly!” bemoans Jester, thunking her head down on a great big tome about the first age of Exandria. Today she and Caleb are tucked into a corner of the university library, studying for their history midterm over stale strudel, and it takes all of Caleb’s willpower to not clap his hand over her blue mouth to hush her up.

“I do not hate Molly… _mauk_ ,” Caleb carefully, quietly tacks on, lest he sound too familiar with his peacock of a roommate. “We’re barely acquainted, through no fault of my own, I assure you.”

 _Except_ , a little voice says at the back of his head, _for the part where you’ve seen him stark naked_.

Caleb feels himself turn a little pink at the thought, coughs, and pulls out a map of Wildemount, which suddenly has all of his attention.

“But you said he was _stinky_ ,” Jester points out loudly. She only lowers her voice when Caleb makes a strangled hiss and mimes zipping his lips. “And rude, and—”

“Yes, yes, I said all those things but…” Caleb runs a hand through his greasy hair very, very tiredly. “How do you know this Mollymauk anyway?” he says, suddenly (and all too obviously) changing gears.

Jester doesn’t seem to mind in the slightest. She gently claps her hands together in delight. “He read my fortune at Club Rush,” she whispers, smiling sweetly.

“Oh?” Caleb whispers back, leaning his head in toward hers conspiratorially. “And what club was Mollymauk a part of?” 

Jester happily meets him halfway, lightly pressing the curves of her horns against his brow. “He wasn't! He just really loves fortune telling.” 

It’s her gesture rather than her words that catches Caleb off-balance. He pulls away suddenly, not because he hates being touched but rather because he craves it in little moments like these, even from Jester. Soft, meaningless touches to everyone but him. He has to remind himself that Jester and him, they aren’t really friends, not like he and Nott are (though who could really compare to Nott?); the hand of fate just so happened to reach out and lump the two of them together for shitty group projects this semester.

“Perhaps…” he begins quietly, clearing his throat, remembering himself. “We should return to studying for midterms, ja?”

Jester sighs, idly flipping through her textbook, but it’s only a matter of time before the questions about Mollymauk start up again.

“Did he ask to read _your_ fortune?”

“Do you think he’s pretty? I think he’s pretty.”

“When you say he’s _stinky_ , what exactly does he stink of?”

“Jester,” Caleb says mildly.

Jester rests her chin on her overlapped hands. “Yes?” she asks, the picture of innocence.

“I don’t think there will be any questions about Mollymauk on this exam…” 

“Who can really say?” Jester shrugs.

*

Where once Mollymauk was a mystery, now Caleb’s head is full of him, and there is such _hate_ in him over it. He hates that he’s accidentally memorized the days Mollymauk actually attends classes, albeit chronically late and not without a tall iced mocha in hand. He hates that Mollymauk owns so many clothes but is in various states of undress around him _always_ (and the fact that he looks far more comfortable in his own skin than Caleb could ever hope to be). He even hates that he’s decided tieflings have a particular smell, and that Mollymauk leaves it all over their room like Frumpkin on a bad day, a strange and almost wild smell he can’t explain in any other way than _tiefling_.

*

So Caleb puts himself in some sort of solitary confinement for a few weeks, spending as little time back at his dorm room as possible. He finds a secluded spot in the library and practically _lives_ in it, eating quick meals and taking cat naps between classes there. 

When he absolutely needs somewhere to crash, he’s got his toothbrush and an extra binder over at Nott’s room a building over, and her roommate is never around to complain about the two curled up in bed together talking into the small hours.

“Still bothered about the you-know-whats?” Nott asks, the sleepiness finally starting to settle into her voice. Caleb is the little spoon in her little arms, Frumpkin snoozing lightly at his feet. Nott’s fingers gently card their way through Caleb's tangled hair, and the moons hang in the sky like half-eaten fruit, still shining brightly through all her windows.

Caleb snorts softly. “Of course not,” he says.

Nott snorts right back. “You’re a terrible liar,” she tells him, giving his hair a quick tug.

“Ow! All right, all right. Maybe. _Yes_ ,” Caleb confesses, when she yanks his hair a second time. 

“You could just ask him to put some clothes on, you know,” Nott points out reasonably.

Except it’s so much more than that. It’s that Mollymauk is so _Mollymauk_ and Caleb is so _Caleb_ , so completely different from one another, and he doesn’t think he can stand it. He just wants so badly for everything to be the way it used to be, him and Nott in this safe, little world they've carved out for themselves on campus.

Caleb scrubs a hand over his face. “See, I am trying this new thing where I do not speak to nor see Mollymauk at all,” he explains quietly, rolling over to face her now. Nott looks less than impressed with him.

“And how is that working out for you?” asks Nott.

 _Completely awful_. “Very well.” 

“Uh-huh,” she says, completely unconvinced. 

Even the moons are judging him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for such short chapters! i write most of this on my phone.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a brief interlude.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> quick warning for some fantasy racism.

There’s a crowd gathering in the dormitory courtyard when Caleb returns from numerology. As he and crowds don’t get along even at the best of times, he doesn’t stick around to see what all the commotion is about, carefully skirting his way around the throng of people, muttering apologies here and there as he tries to avoid stepping on toes or hitting anyone with his book-laden bag. 

That’s when he hears a yell that stops him dead in his tracks.

“Why should we be forced to live and learn with a pack of murderin’, thievin’ _goblins_?” At the center of the crowd is a young dwarven man, his long red hair in neat plaits. A loud murmur of assent goes up around him.

Caleb’s eyes instinctively lower to the ground, searching wildly for Nott. He’s so used to her not being far from his side that it makes him _sick_ not knowing where she is now.

“I think it’s high time we’re owed some answers, aren’t we, laddies and lassies?” The dwarf ringleader continues, lifting himself up onto a nearby stone bench. “Like why we should have to continue to listen to some stinkin’ treaty tell us we aren’t allowed to serve justice to the very creatures that did our families harm?”

“That—that was a long time ago!” a high-pitched voice calls out in the crowd. Caleb instantly recognizes it as Nott’s and begins to push his way through the people toward her, lungs tight in his chest, fingertips faintly crackling with arcane energy.

 _Nott, no_ , he thinks desperately.

The dwarf looks around, and then his eyes narrow in contempt when he spies the little green goblin coming forward. “Maybe before our own time, aye, but not before that of our fathers and grandfathers, _goblin_.”

Someone gives Nott a hard shove from behind that sends her sprawling. Caleb’s discomfort and panic is at once replaced with a cold, calculating rage. Her bag spills open on the ground, and out tumble untidy notebooks in the dirt, as well as a number of her _shinies_ , little bits of jewelry and baubles.

“No doubt stolen from your fellow students,” says the dwarf scornfully, climbing back down to sift through Nott’s ill-gotten goods. He lifts a ring up, watching as the gemstone catches in the light. “Isn’t that right?”

Nott’s huge yellow eyes well up with tears. “I… I can’t help myself sometimes, but I’ve never hurt anybody, I swear. I’m not—” She swallows thickly. “I’m not like that.”

Finally Caleb reaches her, picking her up at once by the collar and giving her a good dusting off. Nott just wraps her arms around him and holds on like her life depends on it. “Give my friend her things back,” says Caleb evenly.

“Or what?” The ringleader says with a smirk. He steps forward, flexing his muscles as he does. “You going to make me, boy?”

Caleb cocks his head. It’s true the dwarven man is solidly built, he looks physically strong, whereas Caleb looks like a bundle of twigs in a long coat. Caleb doesn’t remotely consider himself to be a brave man either, but for Nott, he can be. He will be that man.

“I will have to, again, if you do not give my friend her belongings back,” he tells the man. His voice doesn’t waver in the slightest.

The dwarf spits at Nott, and Caleb is suddenly, strangely detached from his body, Nott, the people all around them. All he can see is the dwarven man’s smug, bearded face as he slams an electrified fist into his nose, and feels rather than sees the crunch of bones and the hot splatter of blood.

“Caleb!” cries Nott from somewhere behind him.

Caleb blinks, then looks down at the dwarf who is on the floor, groaning and clutching his bloody nose. His hand aches, and when he glances at it, it’s covered in blood, and two of his fingers don’t look right.

“I told you so,” Caleb says with a shrug, wiping his hand clean off on his coat. He offers it to Nott now, who looks up at him with a watery smile and grabs it tight.

*

For his trouble, Caleb earns himself a stern lecture from the dean on the perils of violence, two dislocated fingers, and an offer from Beauregard on proper punching techniques.

“You throw a punch like a kitten hitting a pillow,” she tells him, but she’s grinning as she inspects his bruised fingers. “Pretty badass, though. Nott’s telling everyone about how you, like, totally saved the day from some racist assclowns.”

“She exaggerates,” says Caleb, yet his cheeks turn just the slightest pink under his freckles.

“Seriously though, let me help you out sometime.” Beauregard pats him on the knee. “It’ll be fun.”

Caleb laughs. “You mean, you kicking my ass all over the gym?”

Beauregard just grins. “Yeah, exactly what I said.”

*

She’s right though. It turns out getting his ass kicked by a six foot tall former monk _is_ pretty fun. The two of them decide to meet once every week or so to train, and Caleb doesn’t know what he’s going to use his newfound knowledge of roundhouse kicks for, but it feels good to have control over his body in this small way. He even likes the way his ribs ache after sessions, though Beauregard keeps telling him to switch his binder out for a sports bra at the very least ("We're all queers here," she promises.)

And Beauregard, unlike Jester, doesn’t chide him for not getting along with Mollymauk. Not completely, anyway.

“He’s an asshole, for sure,” she tells Caleb, standing over him and showing him the proper way to wrap his hands for the umpteenth time. “But he’s, like, our asshole, you know?”

Caleb flexes his fingers gingerly in her grasp. “I am not in need of a second asshole, I assure you,” he says lightly, making her guffaw.

“Oh, get over yourself, Caleb.” Beauregard gently punches him in the arm, then manhandles his bicep a little. “Oooh, you’re getting a little muscle there, man. Anyway, no one’s saying you gotta be besties with him just… give the hippie a chance. Avoiding him is kinda weird, yeah?”

Caleb shrugs. “What about you and Yasha?”

“Whoa, what are you trying to say?” Beauregard instantly goes red in the face. “I don’t avoid her… much… she’s just not into me, I’m giving her her space right now.”

She gives him another punch on the arm. “Hey, is this your way of saying you’re totally crushing on Molly?”

The glare he gives her is positively murderous. “No.”

“Oh, man! _You_ ,” Beauregard says pointedly, “are almost as gay as I am.”

“I am not…” Caleb retorts, though there’s no heat in his words. 

“Not what? Gay?” Beauregard looks at him long and carefully. “Sorry for assuming,” she finally says, grinning in a way that says she’s not that sorry at all.

“It’s all right,” says Caleb with a shrug. “I suppose I am still… questioning things about myself, you know?”

“Like whether or not you want to hate makeout with a tiefling in a broom closet?” she teases, raising her eyebrows.

“I would rather you punch me in the face,” Caleb tells her with the utmost sincerity.

Beauregard grins from ear to ear and cracks her knuckles. “Now that can be arranged.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> caleb dies in real life.

It happens after a couple weeks of moping around Nott’s dorm without much to do. Caleb misses his own collection of books terribly, and his own bed, and not wearing a binder all day when reading his own books in his own bed.

He tells himself he’ll just pop in real quick while Mollymauk is out pretending to give a shit about attendance, and then one book becomes two, and two books becomes Caleb snoring quietly on his twin bed, a volume on the history of the Dragon Coast splayed open on his face.

It’s dark when he wakes, and someone is giggling. Caleb’s blood freezes in his veins, but he daren’t move now, his anxiety spiking through him like daggers and his panicked brain just telling him to fucking _play dead_.

Then the giggling turns to wet noises, and the wet noises are mingled with soft moans; Caleb realizes with growing horror that Mollymauk has brought someone home with him and _doesn’t know Caleb is there_. 

There are maybe two ways he can think to handle this: jump out of bed and run out of the room screaming, or, die in real life. He lies there on his back, warm breath rebounding off the pages of his book, and prays for his pounding heart to give out.

But what if Mollymauk brought someone home and _did_ see Caleb? Maybe he did, and just doesn’t care. Caleb wouldn’t put it past him, but the thought makes him uncomfortably warm all the way down to the pit of his stomach.

So he waits for what feels like an eternity, and does _not_ think about Mollymauk fucking just ten feet away. He certainly doesn't thinking about the heat pooling between his legs either, or that tiefling smell filling the room, steamy and strange. When Mollymauk’s partner finally leaves, Caleb’s thighs are trembling and wet as he sneaks toward the door himself.

“Caleb?” He startles, turns back to catch Mollymauk, sweat glistening on his violet skin under the rectangle of light from the hallway. 

“Caleb, it’s okay, you don’t have to go,” Mollymauk is saying, and his voice sounds so small, so soft and so tired that Caleb has the wildest thought of turning around and climbing into his arms.

Instead he says nothing, closing the door behind him, feeling like his heart will burst.

*

Caleb is walking across the quad, the manicured grass crisp and wet under his feet. The sky is washed with ink, stars showing through like pinpricks in paper.

There’s a white stone tower on campus where no tower ever was before. It manifests suddenly and without warning, reaching into the night sky like a pale fist, surely a work of great magic.

Somehow Caleb knows it is calling to him; he knows it like he knows the very magic etched into his own mind. He feels tired, thirsty and hungry, but nonetheless he tucks his grimoire under his arm and steadily walks toward this mysterious tower.

“Caleb! Caleb!” Jester calls, sprinting after him with her skirts billowing behind her. “Don’t forget this,” and she hands him a giant lollipop, but this doesn’t seem so strange.

Caleb continues to walk.

Mollymauk appears in a window high above, but this doesn’t seem so strange either. He leans out of the tower, wearing a dress of white muslin, beckoning Caleb with his long, slender arms, and Caleb knows he cannot say no.

So he climbs. He climbs and climbs until his thirst is forgotten, and then so are the pangs of hunger. When he reaches the room at the very top of the tower, Mollymauk turns to him, radiant and beautiful, wavering at the very edges of his being, and kisses his forehead. His lips make Caleb’s ears buzz.

Then Mollymauk cradles Caleb’s face in his hands and says, “So that’s your game, then, huh? Just avoid me forever?”

Caleb’s awake in a heartbeat. His head snaps up from the book he’s dangerously close to drooling on in the library to lay eyes on Mollymauk, the _real_ Mollymauk, smiling toothily at him from across the scrubbed wood table. 

“Are you… stalking me now?” Caleb says blearily, trying to discreetly wipe the drying spit from the corner of his mouth and chin.

“Please don’t flatter yourself. I go to the library too, you know,” says Mollymauk, waving a clawed lavender hand dismissively like he’s scrubbing a stain out of the air.

Caleb just stares incredulously. 

Mollymauk shrugs, but Caleb swears his cheeks darken a shade. “For the free internet,” he explains. “The wifi in the dorms sucks.”

“Of course. Why would the great Mollymauk Tealeaf stoop to anything so tedious as reading and studying?”

Mollymauk laughs. “That’s quite the opinion you have of me, Caleb, considering you don’t know a damn thing about me.”

Caleb carefully marks his page and shuts his textbook with a clap. “The things I know would astound you,” he tells him, but his mouth goes terribly dry remembering the other night, the softness of Mollymauk’s voice and the heat in his belly.

Mollymauk slowly leans across the table, and there’s that look again, the look of a challenge in his deep red eyes that Mollymauk gave him when they first met. It almost makes Caleb flinch to look into those eyes. “Try me, darling.” 

But Caleb does not flinch. He stares Mollymauk right in the eye and says, “All right, I know you don’t give a shit about being here. What I can’t figure out is _why_ you’re still here.” 

This only makes Mollymauk laugh, something soft and genuine this time. “I can’t imagine you actually care.”

“I don’t,” Caleb says, but that feels like a lie the moment the words are out of his mouth. He sighs, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “All right, maybe I… do. I can’t explain it.”

Caleb has met slackers, those kids sailing on passing grades or buying essays, the ones that sit back and go through the motions, happy to dump all the work on people like Caleb. Mollymauk is something differently entirely. A big _something_ that Caleb can’t quite put his finger on, and, truth be told, a part of his keen brain is itching to solve that particular puzzle.

“Is that what this is about?” Mollymauk leans in a little more, props himself up on both hands. Any closer and he’d almost be on top of Caleb. “You couldn’t give a shit about anything, but you care about what happens to the poor little tiefling? You have a funny way of showing it.”

Caleb has nothing to say to that. Mollymauk is right. Caleb has been a fool this whole time, ducking and avoiding him over his own insecurities, never once dealing with the problems staring him head on like a deer in headlights. It’s simply not in his nature. Far easier to run. Far easier to be a coward.

“I tell you what,” Mollymauk taps a long fingernail on the table for emphasis, “you should come see my friends’ show tomorrow night with me. How does that sound? I’ll be on my very best behaviour. No nudity or anything,” he adds, a fang dipping over his lip when he smiles crookedly.

“We’re not friends,” Caleb blurts out, not to be a total arschloch, but because it’s a painfully obvious fact.

“Nope, not yet at least,” says Mollymauk, like a promise. “I don’t think you’ve really tried though, have you?”

Right again on two counts. Caleb runs a hand through his hair. “You know, Mollymauk, I think you have a deal,” he says at last, breath just the slightest bit shaky.

Mollymauk extends a long-fingered hand, dark nails glinting under the lights. Caleb looks at it quizzically.

“Well, you gotta shake on it now, Caleb. Just so I know you’re a man of your word,” Mollymauk teases, wiggling his fingers a little.

Caleb takes Mollymauk by the hand and the warmth seeps all the way down to his bones.


End file.
